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Back in the U.S.S.R.

Updated Sept. 21, 2004 12:01 a.m. ET

Next month's presidential election in Ukraine offers its 48 million people stark choices about their future. But the poll took on even greater significance once Vladimir Putin declared democracy kaput in neighboring Russia last week. We'll now see whether the experiment in political freedom will survive anywhere in the ex-U.S.S.R.

The omens are mixed to bad. In contrast with the insipid "elections" in Russia and Kazakstan recently, Ukraine's spirited campaign reminds us that people everywhere relish electoral choice. Viktor Yushchenko, a former prime minister, leads the opposition camp -- and most polls by 5-8 percentage points -- against Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who was tapped by the unpopular president, Leonid Kuchma, to replace him.

But the bigger battle here is whether Ukraine -- after Russia, the biggest ex-Soviet republic by population -- follows the Putin or the Western political model. In their desperation to hang on to political (and hence economic) power, Kuchma & Co. are learning a lot from Moscow. Ukraine's seven state-owned television channels are blatantly anti-Yushchenko, a media watchdog reported yesterday. Mr. Yushchenko has, according to his own campaign staff, escaped two attempts on his life in the last two months. Last week, Austrian doctors treated him for chemical poisoning. In July, a truck tried to ram his car off the road.

As in the 1999 presidential elections and the last two parliamentary ones, voters expect the sitting government to rig the ballot: Only 12.5% of Ukrainians believe this contest will be fairly decided, according to a recent poll. After he won free elections in 1994 -- when the incumbent, in a first for the ex-U.S.S.R. outside the three Baltic countries, allowed a handover of power -- Mr. Kuchma shamelessly denied his opponents the same courtesy. Ukraine's democratic traditions are weaker as a result, but they haven't disappeared. This election will probably be the watershed.

Putin's Russia and the U.S. and Europe have conflicting interests here. From experience, Mr. Putin knows that democratic neighbors naturally gravitate toward the West. Witness Georgia's attempts to shake off Russian meddling after last year's "Rose Revolution"; Mr. Kuchma's Ukraine also leaned toward NATO and the EU before the sitting president became mired in corruption and other scandals. The Russian president, who embraced Mr. Kuchma in his troubled years, this summer all but endorsed his handpicked successor.

The West can't afford to mince words in Ukraine. As in the 1990s, the strategically-located country today again is a "keystone in the arch" -- in the words of Ukraine expert Sherman Garnett -- in any Western strategy to stabilize the region. In Belarus, dictator Aleksander Lukashenko will proclaim himself virtual president for life in next month's laughable "elections." All five Central Asian countries and all but Georgia in the Caucasus are autocratic. Mr. Putin fits right in with this retro-Soviet crowd.

Economic and military might gives the U.S. leverage, while the EU can offer trade ties -- perhaps even membership one day. The Kremlin was livid when George W. Bush criticized Mr. Putin last week. The U.S. needs to fill the void in the public debate. The silence of the German and French leaders was deafening in Moscow.

A clean result next month would build on recent economic gains and make Ukraine more politically mature. A Ukraine as an example for its cousins in the ex-U.S.S.R. would be a win-win for everyone -- and a welcome bit of good news from that part of the world this year.